• Age: 37 
• Role: Director, Parts & Warranty 
• Employer: Summit School Services 
• Location: Warrenville, IL  

Charli Sanders has built a career grounded in curiosity, logistics, and service, bringing a data-driven and people-focused approach to student transportation. 

As director, parts and warranty at Summit School Services, Sanders leads a team that supports field operations through parts purchasing, warranty claim management, supplier relationships, and fleet maintenance systems. Working primarily remotely, she supports the company’s corporate office in Warrenville, Illinois. Her role places her at the intersection of operations, procurement, and engineering, where she collaborates closely with internal teams and OEM and vendor partners, including Thomas Built Buses, IC Bus, Blue Bird, Cummins, GM, and Ford. 

Sanders’ path into the industry was shaped by a lifelong connection to logistics and transportation. She joined the U.S. Army at age 17 in a 92Y Supply Capacity. “I guess you could say that I’ve worked in logistics and transportation my entire adult life,” she said.  

After four years of service, she transitioned out of the Army to focus on school and raising her family, while exploring a wide range of interests, including retail, sales, digital design, freelance copywriting, and administrative work. 

Her next career chapter began in 2012 at Hertz Rental Car, a move driven entirely by curiosity. “I pursued a career at Hertz simply because I knew nothing about it,” Sanders said. “The general manager who interviewed me was contagiously happy.” Once she began learning the business, she quickly realized how many different skills were required to move within the organization and was immediately hooked. 

Starting in insurance replacement rentals, Sanders later moved into airport operations and intentionally sought out cross-training opportunities. “I learned everything I could about every department and asked for cross-training so I could experience them all,” she said.  

Her willingness to take on new challenges eventually led her into maintenance, where she began working in the parts room and continued to promote through leadership roles until leaving the company in 2020. 

How Curiosity Shaped a Career in Student Transportation 

That transition coincided with a major life change. After spending her life in southwest Oklahoma and north Texas, Sanders chose to relocate her family to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. “Choosing to leave the company that had been such a strong part of my life and growth was extremely difficult,” she said, but her children needed a different pace of life.  

Just one year after the move, she was recruited into student transportation, an industry that quickly felt personal. “My kids would be riding the bus to school for the first time in their lives, and it just felt right.” 

Today, Sanders leads a team focused on building strong processes and relationships that support the field. She finds the greatest satisfaction in “solving complex issues with data and process building to make my portion of the process easier for everyone else.” 

“Since stepping into this role, she has built a team of parts and warranty experts whose primary mission is to support our expert team of maintenance professionals through onboarding high-value lower-cost parts suppliers, creating standard operating procedures (SOPs), communicating and tracking open recalls and campaigns, and resolving all parts & warranty related issues,” said Wayne Skinner, senior vice president, fleet, maintenance, and procurement at Summit School Services. 

According to Skinner, Sanders recently cleaned up the company’s parts master database, streamlining parts purchasing while simultaneously reducing duplicate and obsolete parts by more than 75% 

One of the most important lessons she has learned in student transportation is the heightened sense of responsibility that comes with the work. “The emphasis on safety hits differently when the most important customers are the children we are tasked with transporting,” she said. 

The advice that guides her career comes from her father. “If you approach every problem or new thing from a place of curiosity, it’s the best chance you have at ever knowing what you’re talking about or doing,” she said. 

Looking ahead, Sanders is optimistic about the industry's future. “Technology has been on a drastic upswing in recent decades,” she said. “If it’s harnessed correctly, we can solve just about any problem.” 

One phrase she keeps close sums up her approach to both work and life: “Everything is figureoutable.”